“Trump makes his biggest move on climate with car rules,” E&E News

Unlike electricity, there’s no fuel ready to displace oil in transportation. Electric vehicles are gaining steam, but they only represent about 1 percent of the U.S. fleet. The escalating targets were seen as a way to spur auto industry innovation while simultaneously confronting climate change.

“If EPA is successful, the new proposals would go farther than any other action the Trump Administration has taken to date in rolling back climate policy,” Danny Cullenward, a research associate at the think tank Near Zero, said in an email. “[Q]uantitatively, the scale of transportation sector emissions and the lack of other successful drivers in reducing GHG emissions in this sector make the impact of any rollback in state and/or federal standards extremely potent.”